Should I have the bathroom floor tiled or not?

The floor is where a bathroom quietly fails. Splashes from a shower, an overflowing bath, a slow leak behind the loo — a tiled and properly sealed floor shrugs all that off, and a laminate one does not.

The substrate matters more than the tile. A springy timber floor will flex, and tiles don't flex — you get cracked grout first, then cracked tiles, then water finding its way through. Overboarding with a proper tile backer board, or beefing up the floor, is not an upsell; it's the difference between a floor that lasts and one that doesn't.

This is the step people skip in Macclesfield's older houses, and it's the one that bites. A Victorian terrace has original joists, often notched about by a century of pipe and cable runs, under floorboards that were never intended to carry a tiled floor. Tile straight onto that and the floor will move, because it always has — you just never noticed until you put something rigid on top of it. Expect the floor to need strengthening or overboarding first, and budget for it, rather than discovering it on the day the tiler arrives.

Choose the finish for wet feet. A polished tile that looks superb dry can be genuinely dangerous wet, and bathrooms are where people fall. There are ratings for this — ask.

Vinyl is a legitimate alternative: warm, softer underfoot, cheaper, and modern sheet vinyl with welded seams is completely waterproof. It won't last like tile, but in a small bathroom on a tight budget it's an honest choice rather than a compromise.